There’s a minute in the latest Superman movie, Man of Steel, where I think I’m going to like this movie a lot. One of my chief complaints about superhero movies is the extended and mostly useless origin story. The origin lasts 30-45 minutes and doesn’t really add much to the story. We just end up with less time to tell the story the filmmakers really want to tell. And, for most superheroes, we don’t need to know or care about their origin.The Man of Steel gave me hope for a minute, but then it descended into a loud, dreary mess that should embarrass everyone associated with the movie. Let’s see what went wrong. WARNING: Spoilers inside

When Man of Steel finishes with the Krypton section and jumps to Clark Kent itinerant wanderer and do-gooder, I thought we would be relived of the Clark Kent as a small boy scenes that were going to be too long to skip past and too short to actually mean anything. But then they had to ruin that with flashbacks to his childhood. The movie had so much going for it and it blew it all. Let’s start with the (few) things that I did like.

Russell Crowe was damn good as Jor El. He made the entire Krypton scenes worth watching and his interactions with Superman and Lois Lanes were worthwhile. Speaking of Lois Lane, not only did Amy Adams play the hell out of her, the filmmakers didn’t make her an idiot. She is a real reporter who tracked down and knows that Clark Kent is Superman. She was also responsible for helping save the planet and didn’t have to do much of the damsel in distress role. The later scenes of Clark running around with a fake  cape (as shown in the trailer) and pretending to be a hero really captured the essence of the character. It was the rest of the movie that ruined it. Henry Cahill did a good job playing Superman (at least the best he could with the poor material he was given) and I’m looking forward to seeing him play the role under a decent filmmaker.

So Krypton grows people to fill certain roles in society. And Zod was grown and trained to protect Krypton. And the people who made this decision thought it would be a good idea to have an amoral, lunatic in this role? Not only does Zod, over the course of the movie, try to pull a coup and commit genocide, he also decides that torturing and killing the only other Kryptonian left in the universe is the best way to help out the future of Kryptonians. And then let’s talk about Jonathan Kent, who wants Clark to be so selfish that he suggests that protecting his identity is more important that saving a busload of kids. And decides that it’s better to die than to let his superpowered son save the family dog. He’s not someone Superman should look up to. He’s an idiotic excuse for a person who believes that people should suffer now just in case you might be able to help someone who will suffer in the future. His death was no loss and Superman will hopefully have better moral teachers without Jonathan Kent in the way.

The destruction of Metropolis was ridiculous and well out of proportion as to the rest of the movie and the director seemed to enjoy watching destruction for destruction’s sake. Superman did nothing to try to move the fight out of the city and away from people. He’s as much to blame for all the destruction and deaths as Zod and the other Kryptonians. As for the ending, the movie was setup in such a way that this was the only outcome. I don’t have the same issues with it that other people did, but it did lead to the one big issue I had with the movie. This movie was dreary and glum and not in the least bit enjoyable. There was no humor and no reason to want to cheer on a hero or want anyone to succeed. While I don’t agree completely with Andrew Wheeler’s piece in Comics Alliance, I do agree with one major point of his:

Superman is not a hero in this movie; he’s a liability. This is a movie where everyone would have been better off — and thousands more people would be alive — if Superman had never come to our planet.

What a telling statement for a super hero movie. The realization that the entire world would be better off without the super hero. Superman brought on the destruction of Metropolis by his existence, by his actions and by his father’s horrible moral leadership. I would hope this movie is quickly forgotten and the franchise started over with a creative team who understands Superman, since it’s clear that these creators do not. Not Recommended.